Analysis: Why Honda’s new MotoGP look represents more than just fresh paint

The good news for Honda coming into the 2025 MotoGP season is that things really can’t get any worse.

Over the last five years it has experienced a dramatic downturn in form that has seen it go for three winless campaigns since 2020 (including last season), lose long-time title sponsor Repsol and allow this generation’s best talent in Marc Marquez slip away to Ducati.

The path to Honda’s nadir is well-documented. Years of difficult RC213Vs being masked by six-time MotoGP champion Marquez’s talent were frightfully exposed in 2020 when he had to sit out the whole season due to injury. This prompted it into a design philosophy change that only made things worse, with Marquez needing to break away at the end of 2023 having put his body through hell to get fit again only for HRC to not repay this in kind.

As such, little was expected to come from the 2024 season. But what transpired was far worse than anyone imagined.

Honda went the wrong way again with development philosophy at the start of 2024 that led to it once more chasing its tail to find the right direction. While towards the latter stages of the campaign there were some signs of improvement, with Johann Zarco getting the marque’s best result of eighth in Thailand (albeit in a wet grand prix), the numbers at the end of the year made for miserable reading.

Finishing last in the constructors’ championship for the fourth year in a row, Honda scored just 75 points - 110 fewer that it achieved in 2023, where it was able to grab something of a fluke win with Alex Rins at COTA. At no point did HRC manage double digit scoring in any round last year.

It’s best rider in the standings was Johann Zarco in 17th on 55 points, while factory duo Joan Mir and Luca Marini were dead-last of the full-time riders in the championship on a combined 35 points. Marini - picked as Marquez’s replacement from a slender pool of options - didn’t get on the scoresheet until the German GP, nine rounds in and that was only the result of a penalty for a rider ahead.

With Mir at a 1.05 point-per-round average and Marini at 0.7 PPR, Repsol’s decision to end a partnership that has gone strong since 1995 is easily forgivable.

Honda, as it comes into 2025, is at rock bottom.

But tough times demand tough hearts. And Honda has clearly accepted what it has done up till now isn’t working. One of the big reasons MotoGP’s Japanese manufacturers have slid so far behind its European rivals has been cultural. The latter approach is much more forthright, trial-and-error, whereas the Japanese brands are much more methodical - a development must work before it can hit a track.

Of course, the only real way to know if a development truly works is to race it. This is something Yamaha has been able to do in 2024 courtesy of former Ducati engineer Max Bartolini being installed as technical director. Honda has taken a leaf out of its book and signed itself a big-name European engineer to spearhead development in 2025.

Honda had been looking at former KTM man Fabiano Sterlacchini as a possible option, but ultimately went with Aprilia technical director Romano Albesiano instead. The Italian masterminded the RS-GP’s evolution from paddock joke to a bike good enough to snare the reigning world champion Jorge Martin for this season.

The task facing Albesiano at Honda is similar to what he had to face with Aprilia back in 2015, albeit with a vastly superior set of resources at his disposal in the form of the mighty Honda Racing Corporation. While times have been tough for too long, this is the brand that won six titles in seven years with Marquez between 2013 and 2019; was champion in 2011 with Casey Stoner; beat Valentino Rossi and Yamaha in 2006 with Nicky Hayden; and obliterated the first two years of the modern era with Rossi in 2002 and 2003.

Honda hasn’t forgotten how to win. And so, the confident talk that was presented at Honda’s 2025 launch event - where it unveiled its new-look livery and Castrol title sponsor - is easy to understand.

“I think this positivity comes from all the new engineers that are joining the project, starting from Romano but also other very good engineers we have in the team,” Luca Marini says when asked by Crash.net why he is certain Honda will make a step in 2025.

“I think this is a huge change that Honda never had in the past. So, for this reason things are starting to change. I already said this last year, but even more I can see this change through this winter. For sure Romano only started working on this project in January, so it will take some time to feel his ideas and his hands on this new project. But only to share the knowledge and the feedback of the other manufacturers, and especially the working method that the Italian manufacturers have now, will change everything. We need some time, but everybody is super positive and super motivated.”

Team-mate Joan Mir echoed this, noting: “I’ve been talking with [crew chief] Santi [Hernandez] about the new upgrades we are receiving at the moment. Looks like he is quite optimistic. So, this makes me happy, this makes me optimistic also.

“I don’t expect something to be on top again with, but we have things to try: we have different engines, different chassis to try. If these kinds of things will help us and put us in the direction we have been asking for a long time, I will be happy.”

Albesiano had no influence in the development of the 2025 bike that has already hit the Sepang circuit for pre-season testing. He’ll need time to pick apart every detail and create something in his own image. But concessions will help him in that quest.

Marini believes come the second half of the year, Honda can expect to have taken a significant step forward. That won’t be easy given the level of the competition, but Honda has everything its disposal to do that.

And that includes a seemingly different Joan Mir.

The 2020 world champion has not had an easy time of things since joining Honda in 2023 following Suzuki’s shock withdrawal from MotoGP. In an injury-hit first season on the RC213V, Mir scored 26 points and a best of fifth at the Indian GP - though this was largely the circumstance of a harder rear tyre carcass working in the Honda’s favour.

In 2024, it felt like Mir spent more time in gravel traps than he did on his RC213V. He crashed a total of 17 times throughout the year and suffered 10 non-finishes in grands prix out of the 20 rounds. His best effort all year was an 11th at the Emilia Romagna GP.

At numerous stages of his Honda tenure Mir has thought about stepping away from MotoGP. A fear of failure has kept him from doing so, with 2025 marking the first of a new two-year deal he’s signed with HRC.

After the Barcelona test, Mir was angry at what he felt was a lack of new parts from Honda and was often the more outspoken of the marque’s stable. That is understandable, but as a MotoGP champion there is a certain expectation that he should be seen as the brand’s leader and maximising whatever he has underneath him - much like Fabio Quartararo has done at Yamaha.

When asked by Crash what he needs to do himself to be more of a leader in 2025 and get his results up regardless of where the bike is relative to his expectations, Mir gave a refreshingly candid answer.

“Well, it’s not easy, because when you come from good results in the past and being always one rider to [be] counted [on] for everything in all the years that I’ve been in the world championship to being one rider who nobody counts on is something that you have to deal with,” he began.

“You have to accept it. At the beginning it was more difficult for me to have to accept it. But actually, I know in the situation that we are in I know what we have to do to reverse this situation. Nobody will think that I don’t trust in the project because I’m still here, I’m still working as hard as I know.

“One thing that helps me a lot at home is to try to train as hard as possible, try to be super fit, do everything that I can to don’t have inside my mind [the doubts] that I could do more. This like my therapy. So, despite of all this I’m really looking forward to start. I want to reverse the situation, I want to start, I want to understand what we will try in the test, what ideas these new people who come to Honda can give to us, what ideas they bring. And more than that, what the reaction of Honda is after all that work.”

Honda has at least won something before the new season: its new livery is easily the cream of the crop. But it is also the superficial representation of a marque finally moving on. It’s lacklustre final Repsol livery felt like a team holding onto past glories, the ghost of Marquez still hovering over it - and the results on track certainly matched this.

The physical representation of this new chapter is already starting to appear. The technical reset with Albesiano at the helm is already inspiring confidence in a pair of factory riders desperately in need of it. A beefed up test team featuring Aleix Espargaro will accelerate development in the way its races riders have been yearning for, while Takaaki Nakagami’s new testing role will also see him bridge the communication gap between the European and Japanese arms of the team.

While it’s hard to suggest Honda could look at podium challenges in the latter stages of the season in the same way rival Yamaha could - based on current paths, anyway - there is genuine reason to be hopeful for HRC that there is now light at the end of a very dark tunnel…